house, aside from asking him to use his holy pulpit -- >> guest: i am somewhat serious. and this is a somewhat different dimension but we talk about this in the book. i would ask him to make the content for us. i think what is happening right now is the public discourse is so disjointed by these 30-second sound . -- sound bites. right now adult learning happens on the 24-hour news. so no one really understands the issues and it becomes emotionally charged and this is this is a chance for obama to really explain why he makes the decisions he does and maybe the opposition, to diagram it out and have a quiz afterwards to make sure. fill in that gap in learning the frankly people -- the one of the most popular videos are about the health care plan.

these are caps in people's learning. >> host: it's a pleasure reading this book and it was nice meeting you. thanks for joining us. >> guest: oh, it was a pleasure. ..

>> this is app hour and 15 minutes. >> i've just been told by c-span, i'm addressing the most serious audience i've ever addressed all of these years. [laughter] so thank you for coming. this is not an ordinary book. we live in an age of mung raking, exposes, documentaries, books on every abuse in industry and government and who knows what, and, yet, little has happened. we're operating in a kind of

curve with exposes. years ago, there were far fewer exposes, and more happenedded. we had people in congress who took some of these exposes seriously and judges who took some of them seriously. we had people in the white house in legislation under johnson and nixon. nixon was the last republican to be afraid of liberals. he signed bills he loathed. he signed the environmental protection agency bill, the occupational safety and health administration bill, signed the product safety bill, and he wanted more. he was the last president to propose to congress a minimum incomes plan to reduce poverty, and a drug policy that focused on rehabilitation, not incarceration. they didn't pass. hi supported voting rights for

district of columbia, america's foremost colony. thiswas richard nixon. there's nostalgia, you can see how we declined since then. this brings we to the effort in the book "17 solutions," and sometimes when we just deal with exposes, they artery alarm people, astonish people, anger people, or overwhelm people. the result is no follow-up. we don't have that many in congress, in the courts, or in the white house to connect with the exposes when the books came out, hearings, litigation, statements from the white house. we don't have that anymore, and, therefore, we can't just relax on exposes. we got to recognize there's a

balty now to exposes. they are important. they are the predicate for doing something and changing something. we have to focus on solutions that embody as their rationale, the descriptions that come out of the exposes, and in that sense, we sort of leap over the mere anger, alarm, or feeling overwhelmed, and we live in a country with problems we don't deserve and slietions we don't apply. the gap is the democracy gap. the gap is a massive withdrawal from engagement even by the small worries of those who used to engage, not that there's not people in every community who aren't engaged, but my guess is

there's a smaller percentage, second stage back up, third stage showing up for rallies, marchs, showing up in city council halls, and half of democracy's showing up. those of you under 30 in this room, you can assail yourself to a generation who doesn't show up. you don't show up, in part, because you've grown up corporate, without a fraction of the civic experience of people fighting a civil rights battle as students in the south and other parts of the country, putting earth day on the map for environmental focus and april 1970, 1500 events around the country, and being embroiled in

controversy of the vietnam war, student rights on campus, other issues, those gave students experience. they came back, talked to students who didn't go out with them, educational process. they had teach-ins. they didn't look at screens all the time they didn't have e-mail, and they had to face-to-face each other. in cafeterias, you'd have argument and discussion about the major confrontations. it did help to have the draft, part of the risk, part of the solution. your generation needs to sober up, get out of virtual reality more, get into reality, and realize there's no change without person-to-person mobilization in real life. you can get information off the interpret. you can find out about events in

the internet, nothing happens without real life exchange, and that's what the occupy wall street tried to show in this three months last year when they had the eye of the mass media, encampments, 24 hours a day. now, i can overcome anything in an audience but a little baby. this is about your future, little baby. [laughter] sleep away for awhile. [laughter] now, let me discuss something personal in terms of all of us. the theme of this book is that democracy works, that it's a lot easier than you think, that it takes a lot smaller number of number of people to lead the way in communities, distributed, say, in congressional districts

because congress is the pivot here for a lot of these redirections. people make excuses for themselves. these are not people who can barely get tho the day because they are so poor. these are people who have time, these are people who have a level of flexibility in their personal life to engage some hours in the civic culture. that's veryings -- that's very, very important. they make excuses for themselves, and those of us going around the country to mobilize people, get them out, trying to get them to express their creative civic juices, who can think up a fraction of the tactics and strategies needed, nobody comes close to being as smart as everybody, and here's the excuses. first exist is why they don't get engaged in pursuing change

that they believe in, and they are not disagreeing with the change. they believe in it. they see the wrong doing. they see the need. they see the trust for our children and grandchildren before them. first excuse? they don't have time. you don't have time. congratulations. you've dropped out of democracy, and you will have to swallow your grievances as you walk through life. what if they have time? i don't know the maneuvers, the meetings, the city lawyers tell you to shut up, sit down, and i don't know how to work it. okay. well, that's something you can learn. i mean, these are the same people who knew huh to deal with complex video games.

who know how to deal with computers. who know how to deal with detailed instructions on how to build their porch or fix their plumbing. okay. let's say they have the time, and they know the rules or can learn the rules. excuse number three: well, you know, i'm a little sensitive, they'll say, and i don't like to be smeared. i don't like to be lied about. i don't like to be intimidated and at work, it can create problems for me. i might not get that promotion. all right. let's say you get over that. you're not blistered by moon beams. you live in the usa. you got constitutional rights. you got the time. you can learn about the rules of engagement and you're not blistered by moon beams. here's the final excuse -- well,

even if i do this, even if a lot of us do this, it won't make any difference because the big boys run the show, because the government is in the pockets of the corporations, and the corporations are in the pockets of the government. why worry about it? why waste your time? just eat, drink, and be happy. have a happy private life. maybe plant a garden. watch the country and the world head towards the cliffs. into the abyss. we live at a time unlike other generations where we can destroy the planet inadvertently, not just by nuclear war, but inadvertently. it's not just climate change.

for those of you who don't want to make excuses, he's my suggestions on how to change. these 17 changes, they are not -- you'll think of others. these 17 solutions, number one, largely supported by a majority of the american people now or if they learned about them, my guess is they would be supportive of ones they have not learned about, like, speculation tax on wall street as part of transforming the tax system. second, a lot of them are supported by both liberals and conservatives whether it deals with war, militarization of foreign policy, patriot act, corporate welfare, and others. third, it belies this

manipulative disoation we're a polarized society. by who? at what level of abstraction ideology? how polarized are we? well, some people hate regulation, and others think it's very important. well, let me talk to those who hate regulation. what is it do you hate about the regulation of the auto industry? well, i just think -- it's stifling -- it stifles motivation and part of the socialist philosophy of command and control of the economy. do you have a car? yeah. i won't ask you the model. what if the manufacturer you bought the car from through the dealership discovered a serious defelgt if all the cars of that model and didn't tell you. would that bother you, anti-regulatory person? well, depends on the defect. back stiffening.

let's say it's a sticking throttle, defect, one that overthrows your brakes and throws you into a brick wall or another vehicle. do you think that manufacture should notify you? yeah, sure, only fair play. all right. what if the manufacturer doesn't want to? do you think the law should require it? when you get down to where people work, live, play, sleep, raise their children, the abstractions, as george lill pointed out once, disappear or diminish. george will was in the home in northwest washington, a syndicated columnist, a conservative, and he's writing out the column for that week, and he's a crash. he rushes out, and on the residential street are two cars crash into each other and a dead

motorist that was expelled from the door. he comes back in, tears up his column, and he writes the column saying we should have mandatory installation of air bags. enough of these pitiless abstractions. all right. now, this is not a list of policy wonkish-type recommendations; although, it has policy recommendations. it trying to say what is long overdue changes and solutions that we need this this country? what kind of support is there out there. how do we get the tools of democracy? how do we get the mobilization all over the country to push them into application? whether they are through congress, whether they are through our own community economies, whether through our own personal self-determination,

neighbor-to-neighbor, accumulating across the country. let's say a lot of people think the tax system is nutty, crazy, overly complex, unfair, unreliable, wastes a lot of our time. how do we transform the tax system? oh, this is an hour. it's not going to take that long because i just have basically three suggestions here m -- here. one is a new principle taxation which is we first tax before we tax labor, first tax that which society likes the least or dislikes the most. okay? we tax pollution, carbon tax, and other taxes on pollution. good. we don't like pollution. it's a silent form of violence, sickens us, tarnishes the value of the property. we'd like to tax it to bring it

down. second, we don't like the kind of speculation on wall street derivatives that crashed the economy in 2008 and 2009. up employed eight workers, fractured trillions of dollars in pension funds, mutual funds, and people's savings, and ended with a taxpayer bailout in washington, d.c. of citi group and washington mutual and aig and morgan stanley, and j pmorgan chase, giant corporations that knew right from the beginning they were too big to fail and they would be bailed out by uncle sam. socialism, bailing out, communism. [laughter] attacks on derivatives, attacks on stocks, comes off the huge

volume of trading, computer trading. i think trade was $700 trillion. all right. well, most people, they don't know about all of this. most people go into the stores every day, and they buy clothing, and they buy furniture, and they buy necessities of life, and they pay 6%-9% sales tax, but, tomorrow, you can buy a hundred million dollars of exxon derivatives in wall street and pay not a penny. now, that's what's called appealing to liberal and conservative senses of fair play, not a penny. now, if they had to pay one-half of 1%, not 6% that you pay, 7%, but one-half of 1%, that's $300 billion, with a "b." france, germany, other

countries, if they are not considering it, they already have a little what they call stock transaction tax. we had one in the early 1900s. in fact, it still exists in new york state, but it's rebated every day electronically back to the brokers. new york state could have eliminated its deficit and then some if they simply stopped rebating it when it came pouring in every day from this transactions so there's a little diddy here. first tax what we burn before we tax what we earn. first tax what we bet, speculation, gambling, before we tax what we net. did you hear that in the presidential debate? [laughter] second principle of transforming the tax system is equity. why do we have 25 major

corporations who last year paid zero federal income tax on billions and billions of properties u.s. based? verizon, general electric. i just met a fellow from general electric at union station. i said, what did you do? i was in the cfo's office. i said, you got quite a tax avoidance, could have been evasion, too, club there. he said, they're some of the smartest people in the company. we actually give them prizes when they end up saving us from our tax responsibilities. we give them prizes. they have quotas, and year after year, general electric has e caped more than any other company from making big money, escaping from federal income tax, and getting billions back from the treasury. they get a check from the treasury after they pay 0. the head of general electric, he

has presided over a company, exports more jobs than creates in this country. he's a job exporter, and so he was nominated by president obama to head the jobs council of the white house. huh? he pays no federal income tax for his company. he pays more federal income tax than his giant corporation in dollars, and his income is larger, of course, than the income tax of the giant corporation pays which is zero. the equity here goes to closing down tax havens, getting tax compacts. others want to do it, but no one else does it. it involves getting rid of a lot of what are called loopholes, tax shelters for the wealthy. if we restore the tax system for

corporations and the wealthy that we had in the 1960 #s which were prosperous, it's another $2 billion to $3 billion. we should be talking about tax restoration. the third principle of transforming our tax system is to simplify it. this up employees some book keep everies, accountants, and tax lawyers, but we have to simp fie so we collect more of it. right now, $300 billion in taxes escapes in income, escapes tax sages according to the u.s. treasury. if we had a more simplified system, and not going into details, but we certainly have a lot of good, smart people who can show us how to do that, we

will collect those $300 billion, and if you add it all together, we'll be able to dramatically reduce the tax rates for 80% of the working families in this country. including those who now pay taxes, and they are making ad modest middle class income. all right, so the second is called making our communities more self-reliant. that's a simple one, that goes with a trend that's expanding. every dollar we spend at a democratically run credit union or bank, every dollar we spend at a farmers to consumer market place that now offers food stamps because some of the prices are beyond the range of low income people, every dollar we spend supporting renewable

energy, wind energy and others in our locality, every dollar we spend at a community health clippic -- clinic that's community based and emphasizes prevention of disease and trauma, our dollars we take away from giant corporations and reduce their sales. that's called the strategy displacement. now, we have tens of billions of dollars in these community economies going on now. "yes" magazine, have you heard of it? big chronicle list, very well around the country, but we need hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of displacement money away from giant corporations whose strings are pulled far from our communities, who can shut down our communities, who are rooted in the community are not going to shut down and go to china or

start speculating with your money because they have to face you every day. they are not in a skyscraper in london, new york, chicago, or tokyo. community economies, another solution. the third is giving science and technology back to the people. look at all the science and technology that's going on. we lead the world. huge amount of it is working on evermore refined and reliable weapons of mass destruction. chemical, bilogical, physical. scientific brains, technological brains not applied to modern public transit, not applied until recently to solar energy, not applied to building practices for efficiency, not applied to advanced systems of sewage processes, water purification, not applied to science and technology for the

people. we need that. we need to redirect it. one way is to elaborate the role of citizen sciencetists. there are thousands, now, citizens scientists. they are volunteering for environmental groups in europe, east asia, north america. what are they doing? well, they are counting the number of seals that go into a certain bay in canada. they can't hire people for that. they are measuring and detecting certain contaminants per billion parts for drinking water or soil contamination. the more citizen scientists there are, and they come from all ages, retired, students, people of middle age, the more understanding there is of science and technology for the people -- on october 24th, cementer -- center for science and public interest, an offshoot of one of

our group led by mitt is having national -- mit, national foods day. you will see useful materials that you can use and apply immediately, even though it's only two or three weeks away to have a food day to have locales in the school, the community, in the stores. inright now, the food that's grn in backyard gardens in america, if it was given a retail sales price, over $20 # billion, and it is just getting started. science technology for the people. protect the family unit. i just picked one slice of that. the commercialization of childhood is out of control. when i was a child, the companies would maybe would sell us directly bubble gum, but

never dared bypass our parents, undermind parental authority and go after the 3-year-old, 4-year-old, 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 9-year-old, 10-year-old, selling junk drinks, watch obesity grow among the young, the diabetic epidemic, the precursor of high blood pressure and laughing all the way to the bank. the corporate child molesters laughing to the bank. they would never sell this junk to their own children, but they add violent programming, two-way interactive programming. there was a colonel who taught appalled by this marketing to children, the commercialization of childhood, the corporatization of child rearing while the parents are away on long commutes, one, two jobs. they put the guilt wrap on the

parents teaching children how to nag, and the ads in madison square garden give prizes for what they call a high nag factor. hey, this is an ad to the kids. yeah, this is a high parental nag factor. he was so appalled. they write a book, teaching our children to kill. we have to shield our children from commercialization of their daily lives. the description here is one that all parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and neighbors can play a role in, and they simply start asking the question what are they doing to our children? their mental and physical health and the range of their horizons and how they no longer interagent with other chirp as they spend more and more of their life looking at screens. four, get corporations off

welfare. that happens to be supported by liberals, democrats, republicans, conservatives, libertarians, but not corporatists. by the way, i have never met a corporatist who doesn't call herself or himself a conservative, but i've never met a conservative who calls himself corporatists. they call it, on the right, crony capitalism. we call it corporate welfare. subsidies, handouts, give aways, bailouts, artificial quotas contrary to market discipline, all kinds of governmental power and governmental tax collected money to the giant, profitable corporations. without corporate welfare, you would not have seen some of the great industries in the country, but corporate welfare is defined as no quid pro quo to the taxpayer.

without government research and development, trillions of dollarings in the last 60 years, you wouldn't recognize the biotech industry or the containerrization industry. you wouldn't know much about the semiconductor computer industry. the pharmaceutical industry would be half of what it is. most of the anti-cancer drugs are funded by the national institutes of health, national cancer institute. you wouldn't recognize a lot of parts of our industry. the era of space industry is a creation of the work done for the air force, and nasa spinoffs have created a lot of -- you ever see ads in the people thanking taxpayers by corporate freeloaders? i wrote to a hundred of them saying label april 15th taxpayer appreciation day? [laughter] thank the taxpayers. i didn't get much of a response. [laughter]

if we are going to engage in taxpayer providing of these profitable giant corporations, we need to have conditions. we need to have reasonable price restraints, for example, on cancer drugs, huh? our tax dollars develop, test, clinically approve cancer drugs, given away for free, and they charge us whatever they want. they were charging a woman with ovarian cancer who wrote me in the year 2000 $14,000 for six treatments. bristol myers didn't spend a penny discovering this or engaging in the clip call testing before sales. the tax mayers did that through the national cancer institute. cracking down on corporate crime. that's an easy one. who has not heard, read, and felt the corporate crime wave? credit cards, debit card, price fixing, unapproved sales of

drugs. the government's gone after some of those. huge fines, four, five, $600 million per drug company, but they just come back because they make $15 billion, and they have to pay a billion in fines. this is a small cost of doing business, and none of the executives go to jail. they are not the prosecuted. these are fines on the company. we live in a corporate crime wave. the enforcement budget is trivia. imagine a corporate crime wave with very few federal cops on the corporate crime beat, and this is a question most invest good good faith -- investigative reporters never ask. they never ask the state attorneys general or ask the u.s. attorneys general, or the epa or the food and drug administration. how many investigators do you have for all the ripping off the medicare and medicaid by the health industry?

how many do you have in the anti-trust division to stop price fixing or other collusive behavior #* -- behavior? last i heard in the justice department, there's over a hundred lawyers. corporate pollution violating laws, corporate crime, silent form of deadly violence. one of the solutions here is not just more disclosure, automatically disclose this information by corporations, not just more subpoena power by regulatory agencies, but more end forcement. the way the corporations get off the hook is they did to congress, and they make sure that the law enforcement budgets are trivial so there are fewer federal cops on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse beat. create national chapterrers for national corporations.

that one was proposed over a hundred years ago by president roosevelt and president william howard taft. just go backwards into the future. right now, these giant corporations are created by state charter. investors do not create corporations, but they finance them. they are given -- these corporations are given their life, their perpetual life, given their existence, their vir very existence, they are not people, by artificial entities, by state governments for the most part, state charter. pretty automatic, but it's the way we can condition behavior, just like they can condition your driver's license. just think of this -- we have giant courses now global. they pit government against government to their advantage. they strategically plan about

everything that we do in life. that's what they do. they don't have to conspire. if we were a strong resistance they would conspire. how do you conspire against passivity? monsanto is planning your genetic future and moving to get more and more patents on human gene sequences and genetic material in our vemg tear -- vegetarian and subhuman world. they are planning the genetic future. exxon and coal are planning our energy future. bristol myers and fieser plan our medical future and hospital corporation of america. general electric is planning a lot of our medical device future. they are all planning our

political future, our electoral future, supporting, opposing now without limit under citizens united, candidates they like or don't like. they certainly planned our government. this is a corporate government. i talked to civil servants who say tell me one governmental agency or department to which the question -- the answer to the question -- who is the most powerful outside lobbying force on your agency or department, defense, treasury, fda, interior, agriculture that is not corporate. they couldn't come up with one. not even the department of labor. these corporations are pumping huge money into the come pains of our legislature and they are also putting their corporate executives in high government positions. we need to roadway write the compact between want people and the corporations. that's why it's important to talk about federal charters for

large corporations. restore our civil liberties. i don't have to tell this audience what the patriot act has done. i don't have to tell this audience how presidents of whichever party with round people up and arrest them without charges and throw them in jail, sometimes indefinitely, make it hard for them to get attorneys. i don't have to tell this audience of busboys and poets that have heard people who have seen and witnessed and suffered from the transgression of their civil liberties and civil rights, how important it is to combine with conservatives and libertarians who are also very concerned about invasions of privacy and invasion of due process, the end of something called proximate cause and a right of trial by jury and presumption of innocence.

we have a president, who like his predecessor, but has more drones to play with, who every tuesday morning is given the recommendations as so who lives and who dies in remote countries overseas. he decides courageously which button to push, and seconds later, people disappear and are vaporized. oh, some of them are suspects. suspects of what? trying to overthrow tyrants in their country that we still back? trying to protect their valley? trying to protect customs we may not like? that's why they are vaporized? what if there's other people right near them? what if their family is near them? they are vaporized. we are having our power used

this way. we're having our name used this way by unconstitutional agents of criminal a great depression where the president of the united states decliered he'll kill anybody in the world, including american citizens, who he and his advisers suspect is a threat, not even an imminent threat it seems, to our country. we now have a president who is arrogated to himself as george bush and dick which which i -- dick which chai any have before, the role of judge, jury, education cushioner, and cover-upper. this is in the land of the free, home of the brave? under the bill of rights? a constitution that has not been technically repealed? where's our level of constitutional indignation here? [applause] we think we can get away with it

because we're all powerful? the world's leading empire? we're banking a lot of resyringe out there that's going -- revings out there that's going to come back to haunt us. we are very vulnerable. we know it. we have to recover, and it's time for us to become a humanitarian superpower. we got so much to offer the world. [applause] not -- military super power, use government procurement to serve innovation. i remember when the department of transportation would not map date air bags in your cars. i went down to the general services administration back in the mid-80s under reagan. the general services administration buys about 40,000 motor vehicles for government employees every year. the customer's always right, i told the administration, who was

an auto supply businessman from new hampshire. that's what you want for someone not to be in awe of the auto companies in detroit, and he said, why not? i'll save lives of our federal employees, and he put out for bid x number of car orders with the speck saying air bags, and gm didn't bid. chrysler didn't bid. ford bid. that break the ground. after that, they all came on board. if you use government procurement, and government buys almost everything we buy, plus, submarines and missiles that we don't buy, but they buy paper. they buy food. they buy construction materials. they buy energy. they buy food, as i said, food, they buy motor vehicles. they buy equipment of all kinds that we use. why can't they spur the innovation, create the new civilian markets by upgrading

their specifications? you know, a lot of companies want to sell to the government. if they have to sell upgraded consumer, safer, environmentally benign products, they are more likely to turn to the civilian customers. the person who had that idea early was the greatest environmentalist of the 20th century who just passed away, barry commoner. he told the pentagon 30 years ago if you buy photo for remote locations, you will spur innovation and you'll help create a civilian economy for much faster than the case would be. that's another solution. federal, state, and local purchasing is over $2.5 trillion this year. the customer's always right. we also want to reinvest in public works. that's call infrastructure. if you get rid of a lot of

corporate welfare. if you renovate the tax system, if you crack down on corporate crime, you'll liberate resources that can be put back into repairing in every community in america with good paying jobs that can't be exported to china, our schools crumbling, highways, bridges needs repair, sewage, drinking water systems need upgrading and mod earn -- ed -- modernization. how many people in the district of columbia without knowing for four years were drinking water with led in it ten years ago? we have to rebuild our dams. we have to rebuild our public buildings, our courthouses, and we're not doing it because we're blowing apart with our tax money instead iraq and afghanistan, $2 million a week goes to blowing

apart and making more enemies in afghanistan. $2 billion a week, at least. we need that. that is the way to create good paying jobs that are real, that actually improve life in every community in america. we need to get funds for this by reducing our military budget. do you know our military budget is higher in real dollars than it was than in the cold war facing soviet missiles? it's now $800 billion including the wars of choice in iraq and afghanistan. by the way, 70% of the american people want out of afghanistan yesterday. if we cut that military budget, which is now $800 billion to six, five, four, general retired of the air force, said awhile back, if we can't defend the usa on $300 billion, you better get a new set of generals.

[laughter] we liberate that money, bring the soldiers from bases all over the world of our empire, who are just agitating and making people hate us, including our allies like in oak now ya off the mainland of japan. we're still there, huge bases. put it back, get the soldiers tuition free college and community college education and put it back into our public works. we need to reengage with civic life. that's the key, isn't it? how do you get things rolling? how do you get the train moving without the engine and the fuel of collaborative citizens in every congressional district, which i'll get to in a moment. we need 14 to organize congressional watchdog groups. now, this is one that's veried -- very modest. congress is the most powerful

branch the tree branches. they don't use some of that power, but they have the taxes power, the spending power, the war deck larlation war, investigation power, on and on. they are the smallest branch of our government. you don't have to deal with millions of executive branch employees. we don't have to deal with judges there for life in the courtroom. we deal with little congress, 353 men -- 535 men and women who put on their shoes every day like you and i do, and they dream every day of getting votes. [laughter] but they've figured out that the way to get votes is, fist, the jerri man the districts so the democrat wins easily or the republican wins easily, sometimes without an opponent. have you heard the speaker john

boehner? here's how smart the democrats are. they made sure that in southwest ohio, john boehner does not have a democratic opponent. it's easy for most of the people to get re-elected. a lot of them have no opponents. more of them have nominal opponents of the major party. nevermind the green party, the libertarian party, justice party, constitution party. they now how to marginalize small parties, keep them out of debates, wear them down with ballot access obstacles. what are we doing about the member of congress? we got to ask ourselves some important questions. answer this one for me. please, be candid. someone who is your neighbor, let's say, knocks on your door,

says, hi, i'm your neighbor. i want to tell you about myself if you got a minute. you put down your little iphone, turn off the tv. i spend 23% of your income. i can let all kinds of companies rip you off, unemployee you, under ensure you, disrespect you, invade your privacy, and expo you to toxic chemicals. i can raise and lower taxes, send your children off to war by just letting the president do it without even having to declare it. see you later. just thought i'd let you know, and walks down the little pathway. what do you say to that person? that's your congressman, by the way, senator, or representative. why, you, i was going to text message six -- or are you going to say, come back here. you mean something to me, so i

better mean something to you. now, how many people here spend more time watching congress than they spend watching themes in the mirror throughout the year? throughout the year? don't all raise your hands. [laughter] that's the problem. i'm told there's 15 million serious bird watchers. [laughter] you know what a serious bird watcher is? okay? up at dawn, into the marshes, nevermind the weather, binoculars, camera, pad, pen, tabulation, elated e-mails and text messages when they come back. i'm up to 48. i'm going it catch you. you're at 73. that woodpecker wasn't different. you're double counting. these are serious people.

[laughter] it's a healthy habit. here's what it takes to turn congress around if you have an agenda with these kinds of solutions that are supported by a majority of the people however passively, included, often, liberals and conservatives and libertarians. 20% of the number of people and the number of hours that serious bird watchers spend watching birds directed to watching congress. okay? how do you get it going? one way is to realize that most people don't show up anymore. half of democracy is showing up. when the members of congress have town meetings back home, do you know what the big problem is, other than the august of 2009 when the tea party people showed up? the big problem is don't put too

many seats there. you're lucky if you get three dozen people, barring some hot, timely issue so let's say you can demonstrate to your senator and representative you can fill a high school auditorium with 300 people. you will have that representative or senator on the stage at the earliest convenience. that's what it takes. is that a big deal? of course not. not if you go neighbor-to-neighbor, not if you know how to converse, not if you know how to generate a little fire in the belly, and not if you know how to give a cutting edge what they are thinking about what's wrong and what needs to be put right anyway. once you get the senator, representative, say we do this in 435 districts. say it's like an earth day event, and let's say we say the only subject for this vermont,

senator, representative, is excessive corporate power. we're not discussing anything else. you better come prepared. that simple series of events will become changing the corridor talk, will become encouraging the good people in congress to start having hearings, to start putting in bills, they are afraid of the people, but the people are not making them give cause to be afraid to the people, and in a constructive way. if people showed them some rumble out there, you would see these lobbyists, these swarming lobbyists of about 1500 corporations who don't have a single vote, but get their way with the majority of the congress, start having second thoughts about what they need to do. once you get people in the room, you get their names. that becomes the core of the beginning of the congress

watchdog groups. the target is a thousand to 2,000 in every congressional district with 650,000 people. is that too much? do you know how much -- how many people show up for high school football games? 1,000 to 2,000 people. every district has colleges, community colleges, people of good intent who are frustrated, what don't know how to connect. okay? say you have a thousand to 2,000. you pledge 200 hours each of volunteer time around all these redirections, these solutions, you agree ahead of time, and you establish two offices with four full time people in each congressional district by raising or contributing each a couple hundred dollars. you know, dinner for four at a decent restaurant. once a year.

you will see what i mean when i say "it's a lot easier than you think." the reason why we don't have a strong democratic society in this country are many, but one reason is that we grow up being told in a hundred ways we are powerless. we're told you can't fight city hall. you can't take on exxon. you want a job, shut up. just shut up and shop is what george w. bush told us prior to the invasion of iraq. you are told that because there's no countervailing telling you that you count. you matter. a few people make a difference. look at our history. all major social justice movements started with a handful of people. six women in 1847 in new york, the women's suffrage movement, the united auto workers put

their livelihood on the ground, at risk in the late 30s. what about rosa parks? talk about someone who started a multiplier effect in montgomery, alabama when she refused to go to the rear of the bus. how many times do we have to be told that every social justice movement starts with one or two people? we have far more than that in our country. of those thousand and 2,000? you're going to see a attorneys, community organizers, communicators grarveg artist -- graphic artists, people in the health care industry, social industry, people who simply know how to go up and down their street and mobilize the neighbors that they've playeded poker with or bowled with. people know how to connect if they see something at the end of the tunnel. if they see a reason for them to

step forward locking arms with other people. there are three little ones here which i will summarize very quickly, but the congressional congressional -- the congressional watchdog is one of the duels. i'm not going to go into the other tools, but you can dream all yourment. you can have the best directions. you can have the best polls, but if you don't have the sighing tools we can use and you can use, we're not going to get past first base to home plate. one of them is simply this, every community has very rich people. most of them could give a darn about strengthening our democracy. nay are into their own lives, spoiling their grandchildren maybe by giving them too much money. there's always, one, two, 3% who are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who have a different perspective

on life than getting richer. they want to look their grandchildren in the eye, worried about our country, about the world. i don't think we spend enough time with these people. rich people give to charity, but it's a society that needs more justice, less charity. if they give to soup kitchens why do we have millions hungry in the richest country in the world? justice addresses the prevention of hunger. i have one of these 17 solutions is find the enlightened super rich. i can show warren buffet, who's whose leading reform is tax reform as you know. he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, and he's told senators that. i can show him for $1.25 billion, we can get transformative tax reform in the

u.s. congress in three years or less. now, he's worth $52 billion. he gives $3 billion a year to the gates foundation, on which he's on the board, and do you know how many billions of dollars can be saved and redirected with tax reform every month? we have to think big. ..

so many of us are watching sports that the city officials say, why expand and upgrade neighborhood recreation facilities? even the kids are watching. in middle school they sort themselves out and they watch their superior athletes instead of playing themselves. we need unorganized sports. we need on professional sports. we need activities as simple as sand lot softball or baseball. we need activities as simple as having a hoop by the garage and using it more with the kids. we need a connection with the agents, with grandmothers and grandfathers playing a little bit with their grandchildren and children.

that is why the last one is called, get back on the field. it will save lives. it will prevent anguish. it will save health care dollars and when you are more in shape, physically, you are more likely to be in shape intellectually and civically because you won't be diverted. so this book is designed to be read, digested and add to it yourself. your own ideas, your own strategies, you're on tech takes. get motivated. if it doesn't motivate you, it's not because of what is in this book. does you agree with a lot of what is in this book. it is because you have given up on yourself. it is because you are in your owner retain and you're not willing to change it. it is because you are otherwise preoccupied. and if you don't become civically occupy, you will indeed be otherwise preoccupied

with more and more personal stresses, pressures, damages and all the things that can with living in a society with a concentration of power in the hands of the few. our power in the hands of the few. it starts with we the people, doesn't it? in the constitution, not we the corporation. our power in the hands of few, politically and corporately that are used against us and are rendered decisions that are against our own self-interest and that of our own posterity. your interest in this book will also give you this book, appropriate called calling all radicals, fundamental, people who are fundamental, not symptomatic. and it is subtitled, how grassroots organizers can help save our democracy.

i will entertain your questions and if you want my -- comment free electronically it is neder.org and if you want to see what our groups are doing, public citizens, alvin morrison is here through what a lot of supreme court cases for the public litigation. there are two simple web sites, essential.org, essential.org and the other one is citizens.org. you see how early we got that domain. citizens.org. get involved, get your friends, neighbors, co-workers involved. remember, we have far more solutions supported by a majority of the people we apply to the problems and injustices on the ground, that democracy gap can be filled by us, small numbers of us are koets a lot easier than we think as long as we have the public sentiment, as abraham lincoln pointed out, behind us.

thank you very much. [applause] [applause] before we have questions -- yeah we are going to have questions. thank you. [inaudible] one quick announcement. we will have you make your way to the bookstore and ralph nader's book and a free book like nann thompson. we will ask you to line up along the narrow side of the room across from this table. that is all i have and i want to thank you and booktv for coming out.

we look forward to hearing your questions. >> i have one question. white on a run for club president? [laughter] >> that is a rhetorical question. i've run several times as most of you know and there are some good third-party candidates, green party, joe stein, rocky anderson, justice party and others of the more conservative persuasion that are on the ballots to give voters more choice. we have documented through litigation and are writes that this is a rather vicious two-party duopoly that doesn't want competition and increasingly calls for the same campaign dollars so to become less and less different especially in corporate issues and foreign and military policy. so, i hope a lot of you will run for local office, state office in national office and tried to run on third parties if you want

to bring your conscience to your task. and it's easier to get on the ballot at the local and that is really it needs to start, build up to the state and the national. anybody? yes. >> you talked about how people give different excuses but we all watched you in your career and in a way, you ran for president several times also so the third-party candidate, everything is great. your political go career seems to be an example of -- against you. [inaudible] 's the first of all we have to

demonstrate it as you don't want them to get away with there. you don't want them to say how do you know? we have a free country. you show that by challenging them and in their fangs come out and all these bad state laws began to be invoked. more and more people learn about it and get upset. we did get a lot of young people interested in clean election organizing and they are going to be heard from in the future. we certainly have reached tens of millions of people on how rigged it was but the fact that you knock on the doors, the steel door doesn't open the first time, second time, third time it will open. you have to keep knocking on the door and if you knock on it at the local level you open it at the national level quicker. you know there are senators who waited decades before their reform was enacted. look along the women's suffrage and the abolition movement -- i'm not saying that we should

wait that long. we have been waiting for single-payer since teddy roosevelt. [applause] what i'm saying is if you loose the first time, you want to try and try again. unless you are willing to lose, you will never wind when you are fighting powerful forces. you have got to be willing to lose, bounce back, and get more resources and keep going. >> you briefly mentioned campaigns finance reform. [inaudible] cuc, now there are packs and super pacs and corporations under citizen united that can flood the elections in our country, local, state, national

and i think you do have to find a way to get full public financing, public campaigns. either through the unlikely event that the supreme court revisit or some of their three or four notorious decisions to pass or through a constitutional amendment or through intermediate ways by saying if you want to do business with the u.s. government you cannot avail yourself of unlimited independent expenditures under citizens united. maybe that will work, but we have got to find ways to do it. i can tell you, most politicians don't like to grovel for money but they do it because it pays off for them. against a potential challenger or the desired no challenge election and re-election. so, if you start doing this

piecemeal, and sometimes that is all you get through, the games men are brilliant at designing around the restriction or designing around mccain-feingold to try to defeat it in the same -- supreme court. part of it will establish something like citizens united to override state laws that prevent corporations from directly giving money for elections, so that is why we have got to get a fundamental effort here. public funding and public campaigns and a lot of the money people have raised can be replaced by giving a certain amount of free time on licensed radio and television stations. we give them the license free to use our property 24 hours a day. we can say no, no, you have to now give a certain amount of free time before elections for

qualified candidates. that will reduce a lot of the pressure to raise more and more money because that is where a lot of that goes. >> i want to thank you for bringing up the united states unauthorized use of drones again. so many of our close friends, -- in pakistan today are working to protest the use of the united states drones, but on this piece, you have use 2000 people per progression of -- congressional constituency and i think it's a very powerful idea. i'm wondering in what you have

written, is there an organization helping us do that? is there software or do we need to initially make it up ourselves? an organization that has more details about how we organize this in structure at? >> there are a lot of good manuals and videos as you know on how to do this and that, how to defuse your member of congress record and the way the members may not want and how to put on a conference and how to build a coalition. we tried this congress watchdog idea what to we didn't have the resources to put into it for what happened was the people who came forward were already active so they have their own local issues. they had trouble focusing on congressional issues because the local issues kept doubling up for their attention. no, don't know anyone who is really doing this. the pieces of it, there are a lot of people doing the pieces, but the techniques.

something the labor unions could run with, something some of the other national groups could run with together. my favorite one is to try to price it out for the first year, to price it at $100 million, find a mega-billionaire who wants to make a historical record for ourself or himself and you know, they give away a couple hundred a million a year now to jumpstart it. it would be nice to always started at the grassroots and maybe it could be done through some media campaign. it is labor-intensive, there's no doubt about it. there needs to be maybe three or four pilots, but once the first victories come, you will see people standing at the doorway trying to sign up for 2000 people in each congressional district.

>> i do have a hard question. [inaudible] [inaudible] of course. whipping people into a frenzy on iran and like before on iraq comes from the widespread feeling that ethnic religious group was as a whole, deeply implicated in support, which of course is entirely false. and politicians like cheney and bush to this day tried to give the impression that saddam hussein was involved with 9/11 when he was mortal enemies with

al qaeda. he was secular and they were religious, so-called. to get a mobilized base of hysteria behind criminal wars of aggression you have to do serial stereotyping of whole groups. >> i just heard that there's a web site for this book. >> if you are not wrapped copy for a gift to give somebody, sometimes they're willing to read it, don't ask me why -- you can visit 17 traditions -- 17 traditions.com. spell out the word 17. 17 solutions.com. you can order an autographed copy.

>> after one last question, make your way to the bookstore and get your book. >> the this is a real cracker jack book. you can visit various trip really courageous people. tends to be very motivating when you see they did all of this without electricity, motor vehicles and telephone and they didn't even have e-mail. >> thank you. i've been telling you following you for quite some time now and i have not purchased the book. i plan to. i sense an elevated tone in the opening and again in the closing of a challenge particularly

people 30 and under. [inaudible] if i am right, and my bright that there is an elevated challenge to get involved and even mocking some of the personal -- [inaudible] >> i think have put it better. that is the message i'm trying to convey. i could add to it, and he came right to that point, it is a lot of fun to advance as a chief justice. it is really very gratifying. it's not just that is hard work, it is but it's a lot of fun. so ask allen moore's and how he felt when he won the unanimous

decision on legislative veto. it was unanimous, was that? close, sorry. the supreme court had a great party. it was on believable. it overturned more provisions than all other supreme court decisions declaring a legislative right of unconstitutional, right? so, it's fun. you don't do it because it's fun. you do it because it's necessary and if it's necessary and important, it's fun. the important thing about this book is you can intersect it piecemeal. you can pick and choose. if you want to deal with establishing an agribusiness displacing farmers to consumer market in your community and said spread it around the company offering is food stamps come for low-income you can do

that and if you want to start a civic school's course in your schools so the students in middle school and high school learn civic skills and experience in the classroom and not just computer skills but they actually engage in reality and not just looking at screens, you can do it. so pick and choose as well as an overall comprehensive approach. it deals not only with where we should go, but how to get there and the tools to organize ourselves for the requisite civic following. >> i want to thank you all for coming out tonight. let's thank ralph nader. [applause]

in 1927 a flood caused much damage to mount billiar and today hastily built bridges along the north branch and wotitzky rivers have become landmarks in the trinity. booktv discovered several landmarks in montpellier during our tour. >> rediscovering community, bringing decision-making back home it falls into a whole idea of the local which is very strong in vermont and local people say this is crazy, the way our food system is that. why are we bringing in tomatoes from 3000 miles away like to get the mere and they taste like cardboard. that doesn't make any sense. we have a capacity the capacity in our own community to foster farms and to develop relationships between farmers and theaters which is all of us

and have a very vital lively food system. so we took that idea, slow when we thought wow what an insight that we could take the slow food in the local movement and apply it to her democratic structures because right now washington is like that faraway farm that is generating these laws. and that tomato that taste like cardboard is a like a lot of these mandates a come from washington so what can we do that is really vital in our own self-governance locally? in vermont we have so many examples of how individuals in towns and counties have been able to do all kinds of really exciting work on the local level. so i thought local, this is really where the action is and i still think that's incredibly important. what i learned over the course of writing the book was the importance of dialogue and elaboration and that did not come away from me. i'm someone who likes action. i don't like sitting there.

so i was not convinced that it was so important for all of us to get together and have conversation and share casserole or something like that. but, working with susan and seeing the example, talking about these different examples of community in action and particularly portsmouth and new hampshire. they were in the middle of a bitter -- about school redistricting in their community and there was a rich elementary school that was busting out of the seams. they were losing students and the obvious answer was to move the students. but they went through this whole process, where they were able to create semicircles so people from both communities could come together and talk to each other and realize what goals they had in common and at the end of the day, they came out of that with a very specific plan that

involves moving a small number students from the bursting school to the smaller one. school politics as some of the most bitter you can get. people get head to heads over them to be able to do that and to take these possibilities that weren't there in the national conversation and they national conversation is either for or against. what portsmouth was able to do was to develop very practical on the ground solutions to problems that would not have been possible if they weren't in fact sitting together and talking about these issues. what we do in this book is we suggest three basic principles for any slow democratic trust of so this might it applies to town meetings and it might apply to participatory budgeting for these processes need to be inclusive. they need to bring everyone to the table. they need to be deliberative so it's not just voting or an upper

town type of situation progressed to the people discussing with the basic values are and how to get there, problem solving and third of all they have to be empowered. you can all those conversations and they can be great but he ended a end of the day you're not a temperature on government. so those are the three elements we have identified and there are many many different forms of processes that can fulfill all three. one of my favorite examples is looking at chicago community policing. they wouldn't necessarily think of themselves as slow democracy because they were developing processes without that framework that in the early '90s, chicago had terrible relationships between the police department and the citizens and so they said, how can we improve this? they began holding monthly meetings and each of the police district and inviting police officers and community members and they would sit there and they would say okay, what are the challenges in this particular district? what do the police do with the

challenges and what of the residents do with the challenges? in one particular community on the northside of chicago there was a park and it was really over ground with a lot of shrubbery and it was a vague drug dealing center. the dealers would go in and hang out in the shrubberies and there were drive-by shootings associated with that. the residents came and said, we can't live with this. what are we going to do? together with the police, using that police know-how, they were able to identify, okay here are the conditions that are allowing these drug dealers to be here. they have this cover you now and there is snow walk through police. so they went in together, the police and the citizens and they read landscape the part. the police committed to doing walk-throughs of that park and residents in the nearby housing project committed to calling in when they saw suspicious

activity in a park. part. as a result, all the crime in the park dropped pretty much instantaneously and so that is a great example of something that would never of happened if he didn't involve the community and the police officers talking together. my co-author susan clark is a dialogue into liberation expert. she knows all about running different kinds of democratic processes. she is the town moderator for our county meeting in middlesex so she was able to draw on her network of all the different exciting things that are happening in dialogue and elaboration. she is also a swisher fellow so she was able to put out all kinds of connections there and get really exciting examples of what is happening in local democracy. i'm a historian so what i was able to do was to show how the public process has really thinned out over the last two centuries. when tocqueville came he saw the

slightly towns with everybody engaged in the democratic process and they are all playing in. gradually over the course of the 20th century, and up until now we have this process that involves walking into a ballad and casting a ballot. that is not democracy. and so once we understand that, whence we understand that we think of as democracy is not that the founders were envisioning over it people had been used to for most of the history of the country, that forces us to really look at what we mean by democracy now we can get it back. what slow democracy does is it offers a way of rethinking and a set of principles so that people can find their own processes that work for themselves and their own communities. in vermont we have town meetings and they work incredibly well here but in california that is not a decision and their decisions people can build on. if they can say okay well, in

order to be really a valuable local democratic process, something needs to be inclusive and deliberate advantage to be empowered. that provides enough of a framework to people to say, look, here is how we can do it in our area. we don't have to have town meetings and apples like they do in vermont. we can have oranges are some or some other process so people can take that inspiration and use it from wherever they are so that the democratic possibility to rise up locally and hopefully i think in some ways i can have an impact on the national conversation.